


Unconvincing Arguments

by Morgana



Category: Supernatural, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-14
Packaged: 2018-04-29 12:55:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5128421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morgana/pseuds/Morgana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hunters aren't known for giving supernatural beings the benefit of the doubt. They tend to shoot first and ask questions later - if at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Morefiercethanfire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morefiercethanfire/gifts), [ZainClaw](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZainClaw/gifts).



> For kidlet, who wouldn't let this be the one-shot it was originally intended as and zainclaw, who put the original gif up on Tumblr. Be aware that I have no idea where this is going, so pairings, ratings, and warnings are all subject to change as needed.
> 
> Original gif: http://zainclaw.tumblr.com/post/33160124169

Stiles glared at his best friend. “Scott, man, I know you wanna resolve this thing all peaceful-like, but you can’t reason with everyone!”

“Why not?”

:”Because people - and especially the kind of supernatural-type people who like to turn guys into stone - aren’t necessarily rational, dammit!” Stiles took a deep breath, then tried to start again. If Scott wanted to be rational, then fine. They’d be rational, and he would calmly, _rationally_ point out why Scott was wrong. “Look, this isn’t just me talking. It’s a historical fact, has been ever since -”

“Egypt,” Scott said along with him, rolling his eyes. “Don’t even start on that arguing bacteria thing again.”

“It’s called _argumentum ad baculum_ , Scott, and it’s about how might makes right, which you’d know if you smoked up a little less and paid a little more attention in Professor Carman’s class.” And yes, Stiles knew he sounded like an old man, but being the sheriff’s kid wasn’t something he could just turn off. He’d discovered that the hard way, when he’d attended his first freshman party.

“Might only ever makes right if you have the strength to continually back it up,” Derek muttered behind them. “And it’s called a fallacy for a reason.” He looked up to see Stiles and Scott both staring open-mouthed at him. “What?”

“You... know about that?” Stiles managed to say.

Derek looked at him like he was a particularly stupid kind of paramecium. “Yeeeees,” he said slowly. “I _did_ go to college.” He leveled an even look at Scott. “And unlike _some_ members of my pack, I paid attention.” He waited just long enough to see Scott look sheepish before he continued. “But it’s not the gorgon you have to worry about.”

“Oh, right, silly me,” Stiles said. “Here I was thinking that people being _turned into stone_ was something we might want to pay attention to!”

“Gorgons are incredibly rare,” Derek informed him. “And they aren’t something you want to play around with. But their real threat to the pack comes from the attention they tend to attract from other, less... savory members of the supernatural community.”

Stiles glared at him, well aware that Derek knew just how much the whole cryptic act annoyed him. If Derek was capable of having an actual sense of humor, Stiles would’ve thought he did it just _because_ he knew how much it annoyed him. “And just what kind of unsavory members are we talking about, here?”

“Hunters.”

Stiles laughed. “Seriously? Hunters? C’mon, man, I thought you were talking about an _actual_ threat, not morons with more guns than common sense.”

“Why would hunters be a threat to us?” Scott asked. “We’re on good terms with the Argents. Wouldn’t they let any other hunters in the area know that our pack isn’t dangerous?”

“Because these aren’t Argents,” Derek said, closing his book with a sigh. “They’re not anything, not really. But they like to shoot first and ask questions later, if they bother with that at all.”

“What?!? That’s not fair!” Stiles protested. “They could be going around killing little old ladies without knowing it!”

Derek chuckled and shook his head. “Unless those little old ladies are on a strict people-only diet, it’s not likely. They usually go in search of things that are killing humans, but they have a habit of wiping the whole area clean without necessarily waiting to see just what it is going after people. And with gorgons being as rare as they are, she’s likely to draw their fire, then leave us as collateral damage.”

“Maybe we could talk to them,” Scott suggested, while Stiles just scowled and sank down onto the coffee table.

“We’re better off keeping our heads down and doing our best not to attract attention. Let the hunters deal with the gorgon, and hopefully they’ll leave as soon as they’re done.”

“And what do we do if they don’t show up for weeks?” Stiles asked. “Or months? We can’t just let her go around turning dudes to stone, Derek. Besides, if we wait too long, we’re gonna end up with a bigger problem.”

Derek frowned. “What do you mean?”

“The feds are looking into this. There were two of ‘em at the station yesterday, asking all sorts of questions, and I don’t think ‘hey, agent, a gorgon did it’ is really going to work.” Stiles didn’t mention that both of them had been hotties of major proportions. He’d save that tidbit for later, when he’d be able to reap the _full_ benefits of Derek’s jealousy.

The doorbell rang and Stiles headed over to the stairs, missing the faint look of alarm that crossed Derek’s face. “Stiles, wait -” Derek started to say, but he was already gone.

“What’s wrong?” Scott asked, staring after Stiles before looking over at Derek. “It’s probably just the pizza guy.”

Derek nodded absently, then sniffed the air and jumped to his feet a second later. “I don’t smell pizza,” he hissed, bolting for the stairs.

Stiles was still grumbling to himself about overly cautious wolves when he opened the door to find one of the FBI hotties pointing a gun in his face. “Hey there, Mowgli. Where’s your Alpha?”


	2. Chapter 2

Stiles seriously considered taking offense at the ‘Mowgli’ comment, but the hunter cocked his gun and he thought better of it. Instead, he held his hands up and started backing away. “Hey, now, no need to go shooting the human,” he said. “See? No glowing wolfy eyes, no sharp wolfy teeth...”

“No common sense whatsoever,” the hunter said, taking a step forward. “Seriously, kid, you need to get your act together and quit running around with these things. I know you think they’re your friends, but this is one hell of a dark path you’re on, here. Sooner or later, they’re gonna look at you and see one thing: Lunch.”

“Yeah, and supper, too,” Stiles shot back, anger at the hunter’s condescending tone pushing past his fear. “Seeing as how I’m the only one that doesn’t burn water when I try to boil it.”

That actually seemed to pull the hunter up short. He studied Stiles, although he never lowered his gun. “Your dad know what kind of animals you run around with?”

And that was it. Nobody brought up his dad, not unless they wanted a foot crammed up their asses. “Better than hanging out with psychos who shoot people just because they’re not fully human. And at least _my_ dad’s badge is real and his guns are registered. You wanna go down to the station and let me run your credentials and see just how good your fakes are?”

“You got a helluva mouth for someone with a gun pointed at you, kid,” the hunter growled, his voice dipping down into a range that would’ve been far more impressive if Stiles didn’t spend much of his time listening to Derek growl anytime he was too cold or the coffee wasn’t made right or he thought Parrish was smiling at Stiles a little too much.

Stiles might’ve pointed that out, but Derek’s growl did a better job of speaking for him, right before Derek launched himself at the hunter, and thankfully the guy practiced proper firearm safety precautions, because the gun _didn’t_ go off the second Derek tackled him. “You have about three seconds to convince me not to kill you,” Derek snarled.

It was almost certainly a bluff - Derek hadn’t killed Peter or Gerard when they’d done a hell of a lot more than this guy had to deserve it - but Stiles wasn’t about to point that out. Especially not when this meant he got to stand back and appreciate just how hot Derek was when he was wolfed out and all protective over him. At least, he did until a voice yelled, “Get away from him!” and a gunshot rang out.

Stiles’ heart stopped when Derek let out a pained grunt, jerked, and rolled away from the hunter, who grabbed his gun and scrambled to his feet. He pointed it at Derek, but the new guy barked, “Dean! C’mon, let’s get out of here. Now!”

Any second now, Stiles was going to do something - run to Derek, trip one of those hunter assholes, scream, _something_. He was vaguely aware of the hunters running away, just like he could hear Scott’s voice calling his name, but it all seemed very far away. What mattered was Derek, who wasn’t moving. At all. _Get up_ , Stiles silently begged him. _Don’t just lay there and bleed, goddammit!_

He was on the verge of screaming when Derek rolled over and groaned. “I fucking hate it when they use silver.”

Stiles’ grin was so big his cheeks actually hurt. “Better than wolfsbane,” he pointed out.

“Not much,” Derek muttered, sitting up with Scott’s help. He grimaced as he gingerly moved his shoulder. “Fuck. That’s gonna have to come out before it heals in there.”

“Do we have time to get to the clinic?” Scott asked, glancing from Derek to Stiles. “Stiles, call Deaton and tell him -”

“No.” Derek’s voice stopped them both cold. “We can’t leave. For all we know, they’re lying in wait for us.”

“Great. So we just stay here and wait for the _psycho dudes who want to kill us_ to come right back here, since they obviously know where to find us, with more and bigger guns. Cause it’s not like any of us are breakable humans or anything - oh, wait, one of us is!” Stiles yelled, glaring at both of them.

Derek just ignored him, while Scott shot him an apologetic look. “Maybe you should go home,” he suggested. “I’ll help Derek get the bullet out and we can figure out where to go from there.”

Scott might be his best friend, but seriously, there were times Stiles wanted to strangle him so badly his hands cramped. “Sure, why not? I can leave my best friend and my fucking _boyfriend_ to deal with the heavily armed, crazy hunters on their own.” He folded his arms across his chest and shook his head. “No way, dude. Not. Happening.”

“Stiles, you need to go home.” There was no arguing with the flat tone in Derek’s voice - that was the same voice he’d used when Stiles had tried to get him to go to IKEA with him, the one that had kept them from adopting the puppies that Deaton was fostering, and the one that still made him cringe when he thought about the Dildo Incident. But this time, Stiles was going to win. There was no way he was abandoning some of the most important people in his life just so he could wait it out at home. “We can’t fight them while we’re worried about protecting you. That’ll get us all killed.”

Goddammit, he hated it when Derek played dirty. “That’s not fair,” Stiles muttered, more as a token protest than anything else. The possibility of him getting the others hurt always trumped any of his arguments, and Derek knew it. “Fine. I’ll wait here.”

“No, you’ll go home.”

“What happened to the whole ‘we can’t leave’ thing?” Stiles pointed out. “Cause unless something’s changed in the last thirty seconds or so, ‘we’ includes ‘me’, so ‘me’ isn’t going anywhere.”

Derek sighed and shook his head. “You’re being deliberately obtuse. Go out the back way and head straight home, and you should be fine.” He let Scott help him to his feet. “If they were going to shoot you, they’d have done it when they had the chance.”

Not shooting him didn’t equal fine, but experience told Stiles that Derek wasn’t going to let up, and the longer he stood there and argued, the longer it would be until they got the bullet out of Derek. Just this once, Stiles decided to let Derek win. “Fine. But don’t think this is setting any kind of precedent or anything. And I expect you to call or text as soon as you take care of that bullet.” He leveled his best Dad-look on Derek. “If you go out there and try to take those asshats on without me, sleeping on the couch for the next 10-20 years is going to be the _least_ of what I do to you, got that?”

Derek’s mouth twitched and he nodded, although that wasn’t necessarily agreeing to wait, just agreeing to take whatever punishment Stiles doled out if he didn’t. “Just go home. One of us will call you later.”

“I’ll make sure you get a call,” Scott promised, giving Stiles the earnest puppy eyes that had never yet failed to get him to give in, and tonight was no different.

Stiles sighed and headed over to Derek to give him a quick kiss. “If I don’t hear from you in two hours, I’m coming back here,” he warned him. He gave Scott a friendly shoulder punch, then slipped out the back and hurried over to his Jeep. Derek and Scott might think he was safe enough leaving on his own, but the memory of the hunter’s cold stare was enough to tell him that he wouldn’t feel truly safe until he was behind his own locked door, and the sooner that happened, the better.


End file.
